Q&A: The Objection: “Who Created the Creator?”
The Objection: "Who Created the Creator?"
Question
Hello Rabbi,
Recently, there’s a certain aspect of the physicotheological argument, and especially the cosmological one, that until now had sounded clear and simple to me, but suddenly seems somewhat puzzling.
The problem revolves around the well-known question, “Who created God?”, which you addressed in the notebooks.
1. In the context of the physicotheological argument:
It is clear that there must be a first cause, whether along the axis of reason or of primary causation,
but it is not clear to me why the first cause cannot be a “mechanism” rather than specifically something of the type “designer.” Once there is some complex thing that does not need a cause (the first cause), it is not clear to me why that thing has to be “intelligent,” or however we define it.
After all, one could also apply to the first mechanism the rule that it is “not within our experience” (for the purposes of the matter, the “theory of everything”), and then it itself would be its own cause or reason.
Why is there a need to leap from a mechanism to something that is not a mechanism but a designer? The need for this gap is unclear to me.
Just as you can say that the designer does not need a cause, you can say that the first mechanism does not need a cause. You can call the first mechanism God, but then the term has no meaning. It’s like pantheism. I also don’t see why the first mechanism is subject to the principle of sufficient reason, while that which is above it is not.
2. Specifically regarding the cosmological argument—one of the answers to the previous question says that at the basis of every mechanism there is an “entity” (the argument brought in the name of Steinitz’s “scientific logical missile”)—so I would say that the entity described by the mechanism is the “entity of the universe,” or however we define what existed before the Big Bang, and between that and God there is nothing.
Seemingly the questions depend on one another, but I’d be happy for an explanation specifically of the two issues.
As usual, thank you.
Answer
1. A mechanism cannot do anything. The cause of something has to be an entity, not a mechanism. A mechanism only describes the mode of operation of entities. That first entity is God.
2. I did not understand what that “entity of the universe” is. If there is an entity, then that is God. The universe itself cannot be its own cause, because the universe is familiar to us and belongs to the class of things within our experience.
Discussion on Answer
The second law of thermodynamics (and common sense too) says that if there is something complex, then there is someone who assembled it. And if it is coordinated, then there is someone who coordinated it. And if that entity is nothing but a machine that knows how to make only a world of our kind, then that entity too requires an explanation: who created it? After all, we are dealing with a complex machine. Therefore the reasonable solution is that this is an entity that is not a machine and is its own cause.
“Coordination that is its own cause” sounds illogical. Coordination is not an entity but a property of an entity. That entity can be its own cause. But coordination is not the cause of anything, because it is not an entity (that was the first point in my remarks, which you agreed to above here).
Thanks for the quick response.
If I understand correctly, you are describing the following logic:
– Anything with a specific characterization (a mechanism, an entity for which this is all it can do, etc. etc.) falls under the rule requiring that it have a designer, and cannot be its own cause.
– Anything without a specific characterization is exempt from this rule.
Otherwise, it really is not clear why a designer, who is also complex, does not require a designer. But the limited entity (that I invented in the previous question), which stands behind the first law of physics, does require a designer.
If I’ve understood correctly up to here—
why did you define in the notebooks that the element that does not require a cause is what is “not within our experience,” rather than something that is “not specifically characterized”? After all, the limited entity I invented at the head of the laws of physics is also not within our experience and does not require a cause.
(the limited entity I invented = that very entity which the laws describe, but that is all it can do, and it is not a designer but a limited creature that always existed)
Because such a creature is something within our experience. We have experience with machines designed to perform something.
Why must the first entity be something outside our experience? I have two contradictory principles:
– Everything has a cause
– Infinite regress is a failure
The Rabbi solved this by means of a first entity that is outside our experience. Why not solve the contradiction by saying that the first thing is simply something that always existed? What difference does it make whether it is within our experience or not?
Because if so, then let the first complex thing that does not need a composer (or reason) be what the first law of physics describes, and not necessarily a ‘designer’.
After all, the theist also admits that there is something complex that does not need a cause or a reason! So the whole dispute between him and the atheist is whether it must be within our experience or not. Why is that the more reasonable solution?
If the first thing had always existed, then by definition it would not be something within our experience, because things familiar from our experience do not always exist (or: are not self-caused). And indeed you are right that this is exactly the difference between the physicotheological believer and the atheist: the atheist thinks that the world can be eternal even though it is an entity of the type that our experience says cannot always exist. And the believer holds that in the background there must be another entity that is the cause/creator of the world.
Okay. Accepted.
But seemingly that answered only the second point, in the context of the cosmological argument.
What about the physicotheological one? Why is it “intelligent”?
If it is “its own cause,” it may be that the mechanism that describes it is all that it can do. Maybe at the head of the laws of physics there stands an entity, but not an entity that takes care of coordination.
Because just as that entity does not need a cause, so too the fact that there is coordination does not require a cause either, since there must be some first thing without a cause.
I’m still missing the leap from the first entity behind the law of physics to characterizing it as a designer.
Thanks.